image courtesy Pragmatic Institute
Welcome to our B2BTechStrat Blog, where we’ll share ideas to help your high-tech firm or digital agency grow with professionally developed strategy. We’re a new company, but we’ve been working in B2B marketing for nearly three decades. You’ll see us write a lot about the concept of marketing alignment, so let’s start there. What’s a fractional strategist, and how can one help align your marketing efforts?
Here’s a common scenario. Startups typically work very hard to identify a potential market need and develop a product or service for it. Founders employ skilled developers to bring the idea to life, then shop it around their personal networks for customers. If a lot of customers buy in, the firm is on its way to funding and maybe even a lucrative exit.
What happens if enough customers don’t buy in right away? Business development specialists usually get the first call. They carry the story out to more prospects. The biz dev rep likely uses the same story as the founders. Experienced reps often find close-call opportunities, with feedback that if the product only did this, we’d close more sales. Progress is slow. Pivoting starts becoming a dangerous temptation.
Then, maybe the call goes out for marketing – let’s get someone to generate leads for us. Plenty of inbound marketing agencies are experts in lead generation tactics using both paid and organic media. PR agencies can help shape a story that gets coverage. Return on investment (ROI), or return on ad spend (ROAS), becomes an important metric. If spending results in some success, often the thinking is let’s spend more trying to accelerate lead capture. If not, frustration starts building.
What marketing really does
What’s wrong? Marketing is more than promotional efforts. Our featured image is the Pragmatic Framework, a great way to capture all the things a robust marketing strategy should have. Digital marketing agencies tend to live on the right side of this framework – execution of content, sales tools, programs, events, and so on. PR and media buying agencies move one column to the left, with marketing plans, and awareness and advocacy programs.
A solid product marketing strategy would have started all the way on the left side. The symptoms we’ve talked about so far are the result of skipped or barely touched boxes in the framework. Tech firms are usually pretty good at defining market problems, a product portfolio, and requirements for developers. They’re often not as good at objectively considering their competitive landscape, a product roadmap, positioning, use scenarios and personas.
When a biz dev team or digital agency is missing too many boxes and doesn’t have the experience to correctly fill them in, efficiency suffers. Efforts become misaligned as superheroes get creative looking for the right formula. Note this scenario gets worse as firms grow, launching new products and services that don’t look like their initial success with customers.
We’re here to tell you that if the product or service is close to actual customer needs, pivoting isn’t the only answer – marketing strategy development is usually a better option. When everything a prospect sees and hears is properly aligned, the story makes sense and the buying friction is reduced. If there are enough customers for the offering, marketing strategy is kindling for the fire. Paid marketing is an accelerant that speeds up the process when the strategy is solid.
In startups or growth-stage firms with intensive development efforts, strategic marketing is usually viewed as overhead. Same goes for digital marketing agencies, who need more hands involved in day-to-day execution. Yet, going it without marketing strategy is a costly proposition if everything doesn’t fall into place.
Fractional strategists: affordable and efficient
If you can afford a full-time marketing strategist, or you happen to have a strong visionary among your founders, count yourself fortunate. For the rest of tech firms and agencies out there looking to improve your marketing programs, consider a fractional strategist. Rather than a full-time staff member, a fractional strategist usually offers extensive experience with an efficient approach. This experience comes at a fraction of the cost you would otherwise pay.
At STRATISET, we’ve honed experience in marketing strategy, competitive analysis, data analytics, and content creation for B2B tech firms. We’re not here to produce 500-page marketing strategy documents with a lot of stuff you already know. Typically, we assess your needs and zoom in on two or three areas in the Pragmatic Framework that drive outcomes against your desired objectives.
- For tech firms, we’re most often in the areas of competitive landscape, market definition, product roadmaps, positioning, use scenarios, and requirements gathering. We can do content creation and channels training.
- For agencies, competitive landscape, positioning, personas and use scenarios are important. We also help with data-driven marketing programs, closing the loop between strategy and data analytics across popular digital marketing tools.
We’re not competing with your agency or in-house marketing team – we’re here to help you be more effective. We offer hourly rates for specific deliverables, fixed price bidding for larger projects, and retainers for recurring month-to-month activities. We tend to stick to our heritage serving B2B tech firms, but we’re also interested in working with firms making heavy use of technology. For instance, we’re versed in the use of artificial intelligence, beacons, digital signage, and Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
How can we help align your marketing strategy? Tell us your story – drop us a note or give us a call. We’ll put a fractional strategist to work for you.